Susan and I slept in again while Scotty was at work, we had a rather lazy morning and the weather was kind of icky again, thankfully it cleared up as the day went on. We both got hungry and decided it was time to venture out in search of food. We decided to be a bit more frugal today and went to the grocery store. The grocery store has a very nice bakery and deli counter and I scored myself some yummy food while we there. I got myself some bread too, bread isn’t very common here in restaurants at all, probably because of all the rice. We also picked up some snacks and stuff and of course we bought some more Chuhai, I can’t get enough of this stuff, it’s really good. I did see some more weird stuff in the grocery store.

I know I have shown a lot of octopus stuff, but just look at this.

This next item I just couldn’t believe. It’s not the item itself, it’s just a cantaloupe, it’s the price of it. This one single cantaloupe costs around $100.

After grocery shopping Susan and I went on an unsuccessful hunt for Mountain Dew, we will have to get some on base, then we went home and ate our lunch. Susan had to go run some errands and do her cheer leading stuff so I just stayed at the house and hung out. Scott’s friend Ian flew out from Seoul Korea today to spend Thanksgiving weekend with us and he arrived shortly after Susan left. Ian sticks out like very sore thumb around here, he is six feet six inches tall and has bright red hair. Ian and I got to know each other a bit while we waited for Scott to come home from work. He is a really nice guy, very easy to talk to and get along with.

When Scott got home we all just hung out at his house for a bit and had some Chuhais. Ian doesn’t drink, but he drinks chuhais, that’s how good these things are. We all just lounged around his house until it was dinner time.

It was really windy all day today and when we ventured out for dinner it was also really cold. If it had been raining we would have got snow. So we parked the car and practically ran to the restaurant due to the bone chilling temperatures. I didn’t know it at the time but we were going to the place that serves horse meat, raw horse meat. We get to the place and sit at a low table, now Scott is 6’1″ and Ian is 6’6″ low tables aren’t built with them in mind at all but they make due. It is funny though, you have to take off your shoes when you sit in low table section of a restaurant, and seeing Ian’s size 14 shoes sitting next to the little shoes of the japanese patrons really shows just how big he is in comparison to the natives. While I am on a shoe tangent I just want to bring up that all the restaurants provide a communal pair of slippers for bathroom trips.

Scott orders us our food and one of the things he orders is raw horse. He has had it in the past and says that it is actually quite good so I figure I will go along for the ride, we are just getting one little order of it, it won’t be our main course or anything. He also gets us some beef, skewers, a couple of steaks and of course a round of drinks for all.

The horse meat is the first thing to the table and here is what it looks like.

It really wasn’t bad at all, in fact it tasted pretty good. The problem I had with it was the texture, if you have ever eaten sushi that will give you a pretty good idea what the texture is like. I don’t think I would ever go out of my way to eat it again but I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have a problem doing so.

Next up we had some shabu-shabu. Shabu-shabu is where you have a pot of boiling water in the middle of your table filled with veggies and stuff. You are then given thinly cut pieces of raw meat that you dip into the water for a few seconds to cook it. This was really delicious, the meat was like butter in your mouth. It looked really pretty too, check it out.

We also had some skewers which were good, nothing great but good and we finished the whole thing off with some steak. Now I am not normally a big fan of steak in fact I can’t remember the last time I ate just plain steak but this steak was ridiculously good. I wouldn’t mind making another trip to this place before I leave.

After dinner we headed off to a bar called Freaks. It has a really sweet bartender who speaks a considerable amount of english, tends to attract a younger crowd and has free karaoke. Last night they had gin and tonics for 400 yen, that made Moe happy. We all had a great time at Freaks we all sang a little karaoke, Scott, Susan and myself had more than our share of beverages and Scott and I had a really long discussion about incredibly smart people like Einstein, Aristotle, Hawkins and some crazy math guys whose names are alluding me at the moment.

Here are some pictures of us having a ball at Freaks.

Scott and Ian rocking hard

Our awesome bartender, she was a sweety

We rocked the joint till probably around 3 in the morning and then headed home. When we got home the Rundown was on TV and I somehow stayed up to watch it. I crawled into bed at 4:30 in the morning. It was a great night.

1 Question/Comment/Trackback so far

Posted by: PaulOctober 23, 2009
4:02 am

Hi there,

Just thought I would point out that the melons are actually around $15-20AUD not $100. The first 1(?) means 1 melon, it’s not actually part of the price. Nevertheless, still expensive for a single melon, a price which I refuse to pay 😛